'The Witcher' review: Season 3 levels up for Henry Cavill's last ride
Two years after The Witcher's second season made a magical, monstrous upgrade to the series, Season 3 plunges fans right back into the turmoil of the Continent, where Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Charlotra), and Princess Ciri of Cintra (Freya Allan) are being relentlessly hunted by…everyone?
In a five-episode, first volume of two, The Witcher Season 3 sends our heroes on the run, severely ups the gruesome monster game, delivers those complex politics, and lets Ciri kick some serious ass. Throw in a season-stealing episode entirely set at the Met Gala of the Continent and the closest parallels yet to the most popular Witcher game, and you've got a winning start to the third season of the series, with showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich back at the helm.
The Witcher Season 3 explores a new family dynamic
Season 3 picks up with Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri on the run from the whole damn Continent, not to mention a herd of terrifying interdimensional enemies — don't take the series' strangely tame opening scene and its bumbling group of "hunters" as the real level of threat here. As the trio move from remote cottage to remote cottage, the season's' first episode has real Deathly Hallows forest-wandering energy, and it's just as strained, as Yennefer endures unsubtle shunning for almost sacrificing Ciri to the Deathless Mother last season. Oh, she knows what she did.
As Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri navigate their awkward new family dynamic through some unashamedly cheesy montages — the giggling tea towel flicking, I can't — those feelings of betrayal and estrangement soften to those of unity and love (read: she's allowed back in the main house).
Chalotra's Yennefer finally regains her power in multiple ways this season, having spent the last two in varying states of pain, distress, and incapacitation. Friends, it's about time. She reestablishes her identity as a savvy political negotiator, big time sorcerer, and maternal magic mentor for Ciri, while groveling to her beloved Geralt. Netflix's The Witcher series foregrounded Ciri and Yennefer as leads alongside Geralt from the beginning, and Season 3 solidifies this.
Cavill, in his last ride as Geralt, takes a grunting, sword-swinging victory lap with the role he's been fine-tuning for three seasons. With his character now as well-worn as his silver wig and leather armor, Cavill's Geralt is at his best both when he's careening through action sequences or when he's resignedly forced into traps, political conversations, dance sequences (you heard me), or Jaskier's humor attempts.
With a Tim Minchin-style makeover, Joey Batey's Jaskier is more jaded and dramatic than ever, playing more politics and having a big ol' crush on the hedonistic Redanian Prince Radovid (an extremely welcome addition in Hugh Skinner). This season, Jaskier is still the show's comic relief but he's also man of romantic pursuits, dubbed "The Lothario of Lyria, The Romancer of Redania, The Stud of Cidaris". The bard's now requisite singalongs are designated elsewhere this season, with Jaskier's biggest song instead an emotionally vulnerable ballad of unspoken love — no butcher burning or coin tossing here.
But the real star of the show this season? Freya Allan's Ciri.
Ciri kicks ass in Season 3
Having grown up over the last two seasons — from the terrified, petulant teen princess we saw in Season 1 to the junior witcher of Season 2 — Allan moves Ciri into young maturity, toward her destiny as the heir of the Cintran throne and probably the most powerful sorcerer on the Continent. Ciri explores her sense of purpose and justice as a future leader, wanting to "offer something different, a way forward that doesn't divide, but unites," as she tells Geralt and Yennefer, "to be the balance between kings and mages, and to align the Continent, instead of constantly pitting parts against each other."
Simultaneously a sage idealist and an angsty adolescent under Yennefer’s tutelage, Ciri still plays some level of the "mewling brat" she declares she isn't — and Allan balances these elements perfectly. Chalotra and Allan spend Season 3, Vol. 1 navigating the pair's rocky, pseudo-mother/teen daughter relationshi; Yen actually drops an "I'm not angry, I'm disappointed" at her protege at one point, and Ciri pulls a classic running away stunt.
But importantly, after all that witcher training in Season 2, Ciri gets to kick serious ass this season. Putting her training at Kaer Morhen to good use, Ciri fights by fist and sword almost as much as Geralt does this season, slowly becoming the monster hunter she desperately wants to be, with even more deadpan quips than her witcher dad.
The Witcher Season 3 sees a Continent divided (so keep up)
Like Seasons 1 and 2, The Witcher Season 3 doesn't spell out the lore for viewers, instead requiring you to keep up with the various kingdoms, rulers, factions, and alliances through heated council conversations or idle chatter at the pub. In fact, I'd heartily recommend hitting up a recap as character connections and context could soar past you — or alternately, watching the episodes with subtitles greatly helped me keep up with it all.
(In case you don't even have time for that, here's your TL;DR recap: Ciri has Elder Blood so everyone wants to either kill or use her, Yennefer got her powers back after the Deathless Mother possessed her, Ciri left open a portal to another dimension with a group of ghostly horsemen promising the end of the world, Ciri's dad is very much alive and actually the Emperor of the southern Nilfgaardian Empire, and Geralt is still Geralting.)
After ironing out that confusing timeline business, Season 3's narrative structure is the easiest yet to follow — and still, it's not a breeze. Don't stress too much, though. Season 3 crams in a colossal amount of disparate narratives that eventually intertwine and make sense. It's all loosely based on Andrzej Sapkowski's Time of Contempt, the second book in the Witcher saga; Season 2 was based on the first book Blood of Elves, and the first season on his short stories.
It's a time of "rogue mages and power-hungry monarchs" this season, as Geralt describes it. The northern kingdoms of the Continent are in a state of high tension as word of the Elder Blood princess is out, mages struggle to keep kings in check, and the Nilfgaardians play a much bigger role, building strength for an invasion. Within the lavish courts of Nilfgaard and Redania, there's Game of Thrones-worthy treasonous power plays, grisly palace presents, the ol' classic blackmail, and conniving advisors. Redania's insufferable King Vizimir (a perfectly puerile Ed Birch) feasts and pontificates while his devious spymaster Sigismund Dijkstra (Graham McTavish) and powerful court mage Philippa Eilhart (Cassie Clare) covertly plot moves.
But there's still a rogue mage on the loose. Firestarter Rience (Chris Fulton) and the question of his real boss and their goal remains the biggest mystery for our protagonists to solve.
Season 3 teases the big bad villains (but only just)
Magegate pervades the third series, culminating in the season's best episode set entirely at an opulent sorcerer's ball dripping in costume designer Lucinda Wright's incredible creations and edited from multiple perspectives and timeframes.
But there's much bigger fish to fry here, villain-wise, with Emhyr var Emreis (Bart Edwards) — aka The White Flame and Ciri's very much alive father (the big reveal from Season 2's finale) — with his big Continental domination plans. Emhyr's plans aren't the focus of the first volume, however, and he's relegated mostly to scenes reuniting with long lost Nilfgaardian knight Cahir (Eamon Farren), so here's hoping there's more in the second volume.
But there's an even larger threat apparent, with the much-anticipated arrival of the Wild Hunt. Teased in the finale of Season 2, the Wild Hunt are the villainous group of skeletal corpses on horses, an apocalyptic foe that finally promises to elevate The Witcher to the world-ending stakes it deserves.
The Wild Hunt's biggest moment in Volume 1 is a scene that more than references The Fellowship of the Ring's chase through the trees with Arwen, Frodo, and the Nazgul, but it's pretty much all we get in the first half of the season. Luckily, while we're dreading more action from this flying V of doom...
...The Witcher Season 3 ups the monster game
If you thought the dinosaur-like monsters who crawled through the portal at Kaer Morhen in Season 2 were something, buckle up. Repeating the series' long established monster-of-the-week format, Season 3’s monsters range from winged Witcher favourites to one of the most messed-up creatures you’ll see on screen this year — I won't spoil it but think Avatar: The Last Airbender's Koh the Face Stealer but worse. Monsters chase our heroes through dark festival mazes, emerge from dark castle dungeons, and attack our heroes' travel plans, meaning we get plenty of killer action sequences with Geralt and Ciri in full flight.
Each battle scene in The Witcher, with or without monsters, is meticulously choreographed by stunt and cinematography, with whooshing, uninterrupted, 360 degree sequences following Cavill pulverizing countless assailants with that beloved sword. It's been like this since the first ever episode, and it's only getting bigger and better. Magic use is also up during these sequences, especially with Yennefer and Geralt, meaning all of this monster and magic mayhem made this fan of The Witcher games especially tickled.
Fans of The Witcher 3 game will love Season 3
Though the series is an adaptation of Sapkowski's second book Time of Contempt, the third season of The Witcher feels closer than ever to the most popular video game in the franchise: 2015's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Through the arrival of the Wild Hunt itself, the expansion of political parrying to Nilfgard, and through specific costuming — Ciri's outfits in particular feel more like her game character's — the series is creeping slowly toward familiar territory for those introduced to the Witcher series through the games instead of the books. Whether or not the season will come closer to the game in the second volume, or whether the show will keep this for the fourth season remains to be seen, but with the Wild Hunt at Ciri’s heels, it’s looking good.
The Witcher Season 3 is an immense political and magical story cleverly woven through five episodes, with the actors appearing well settled in their roles by this point — a quality that could prove troublesome once Cavill leaves the series. But the battles are bloody, the lore heavy, the court drama grisly, and the monsters gruesome. It's The Witcher, alright.
How to watch: The Witcher is now streaming on Netflix.
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